Iran Holds Taliban Responsible for 9 Diplomats' Deaths

By DOUGLAS JEHL

Published: September 11, 1998

TEHERAN, Iran, Sept. 10—
An angry Iran said tonight that it would hold the militant Taliban movement responsible for the deaths of nine Iranian diplomats whose bodies were recovered by the Taliban today in northern Afghanistan.

The Taliban, who control most of Afghanistan, said the Iranians had been killed by renegade forces who had acted without orders. But Iran, which had responded to the diplomats' disappearance with a major military buildup along the Afghan border, appeared in no mood for swift forgiveness.

A Foreign Ministry statement broadcast on Iranian state television said today that Iran reserved ''the right to defend the security of its citizens'' and that ''the consequences of the Taliban action is on the shoulders of the Taliban and their supporters.''

The dead diplomats were among 11 Iranians working at a consulate in Mazar-i-Sharif, a northern town that was the headquarters of an Iranian-backed rebel alliance until it was overrun by the Taliban on Aug. 8. Iranian officials had accused Taliban leaders of ordering that the consulate be captured, but had held out hope that all of the missing diplomats might still be alive.

With some 70,000 Iranian troops already posted near the Afghan border, and plans announced earlier today for more military exercises to be carried out there over the weekend, Teheran-based diplomats said tonight that tensions could turn explosive.

Taliban fighters were reported today to be advancing on Bamiyan, the sole remaining base for two Shiite factions that have benefited from Iranian support.

In an apparent attempt to appease Iran and its Shiite Muslim leadership, the Taliban commander, Mullah Mohammad Omar, issued a statement tonight urging his forces to treat any prisoners of war well and ''according to the principles of Islam.'' But that seemed unlikely to quell the deep misgivings felt within the Iranian leadership toward the Taliban, who follow a purist strain of Islam's dominant Sunni faith that has shown little tolerance even for fellow Muslims.

Throughout the crisis, officials of the Taliban have repeatedly denied responsibility for the Iranians' fate. By the time their forces reached the center of Mazar-i-Sharif, the Taliban officials have said, the Iranian consulate was empty.

In announcing tonight that the diplomats' bodies had been found, a Taliban spokesman quoted by the Afghan Islamic Press said they had been recovered at a mountain near Mazar-i-Sharif, which remains in Taliban control.

[A Taliban commission set up to investigate the disappearance of the Iranian diplomats is to issue a full report within a week, said Abdul Hakim Mujahid, the Taliban's Ambassador to Pakistan, who has been designated as their representative at the United Nations, where the opposition still holds a seat.

[In a telephone interview from Islamabad, Mr. Mujahid said that after the Taliban found the bodies, it asked Pakistan and the United Nations to intercede with the Iranians and ask them to send a team to Mazar-i-Sharif so they could see for themselves the circumstances under which the diplomats had died.

[At the United Nations in New York, Iran asked the Security Council today to take ''urgent and necessary measures'' in response to the killing of its diplomats.]

The Foreign Ministry statement broadcast tonight on Iranian state television referred to the dead diplomats as martyrs, and compared them to Iranians who had died ''defending the borders of this great country during eight years of holy defense'' during Iran's 1980-88 war with Iraq.

The statement called on the Taliban to return the bodies of the dead Iranians immediately to Iran, and to arrest those who carried out the attack. And in addition to the Taliban forces, it said it held the Government of Pakistan, which has close ties to the Taliban, partly responsible.

On the day of the attack, Pakistani diplomats had relayed to Teheran an assurance from the Taliban that the safety of the Iranian consulates and diplomats in Mazar-i-Sharif would be guaranteed.

The Iranian Foreign Ministry statement also called on the Taliban to hand over Iranian ''hostages'' who it said were still being held in Afghanistan. That was an apparent reference to the remaining two Iranian diplomats and a journalist from the Islamic Republic News Agency, whose fate the Taliban has said it has been unable to determine, as well as to nearly three dozen other Iranians whom Taliban officials have said may well be in Taliban custody.

For the last month, Iran has cast its tough stance toward the Taliban as motivated primarily by concern about several dozen Iranians missing in Afghanistan, including the 11 diplomats. But some Teheran-based diplomats have said that the scale of Iran's military posturing has suggested that its concern runs deeper than the missing Iranians' fate -- and might not be resolved even if questions about them were resolved.

The diplomats have said that Iran, as a Shiite Muslim state, is plainly troubled at the prospect that such an ideological rival could soon sit unchallenged on its borders.

It was unclear tonight whether Iran had decided to dispatch additional forces to the border area. A report in the influential Teheran Times newspaper this morning quoted an unnamed senior military official as saying several divisions from Iran's regular army would soon be moved to the region to join the 70,000 troops from Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

But today's announcement on Iranian state television said only that war games involving ''commandos, special forces, armored artillery, and mechanized units backed by the air force and the army's air corps'' would begin soon along the Afghan border. It did not say whether the exercises would involve fresh contingents of Iranian troops.

-------------------- New Gains for the Taliban

KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 10 (Agence France-Presse) -- Taliban fighters have made gains on a key opposition stronghold in central Afghanistan as well as the strategic Shebar Pass, officials said today.

The Taliban, which controls about three-quarters of the country, captured the central Saighan district late Wednesday and were advancing on the Shebar Pass, east of the opposition stronghold at Bamiyan, they said.

''These gains have enabled our soldiers to bring the Bamiyan airport within artillery range,'' a Taliban official said.

Bamiyan is the last stronghold of part of an anti-Taliban alliance based in northern Afghanistan that has suffered heavy losses since last month.

Earlier, the Afghan Islamic Press said Taliban fighters had begun a major offensive and captured several vital bases in Bamiyan province, in the heart of the country. The militia fighters had closed to within 15 miles of Bamiyan city, it said.

The news agency said at least 18 rival soldiers were killed and many wounded in the fighting. The Taliban put its own toll at three dead.

Taliban troops captured at least 48 soldiers, a spokesman said, adding that the morale of opposition forces was low and that it appeared the city could fall to the Taliban.